Anonymisation vs. Pseudonymisation: Which one is most useful for both privacy protection and usefulness of e-healthcare data

Due to sensitivity nature of the data in e-healthcare and the need of these data to different “Healthcare Team”, privacy is one of the important issues to consider for its use. Without highly consideration of privacy issues, available data will not be useful. This results in introduction of different techniques that insist privacy protection. Anonymisation and Pseudonymisation are the main methods in privacy protection. Even though they both protect privacy, their usefulness may vary depending on the usage of the data, therefore users must be able to choose a technique to use. This paper compares characteristics of anonymisation and pseudonymisation techniques in e-healthcare. Depending on characteristics of e-healthcare data, authors proposes the use of pseudonymisation (the use of false names (pseudonym)), technique rather than anonymisation (without name) technique in e-healthcare as it will allow usage of the data to different “Healthcare Team” while protecting privacy of an individual. Also the use of different techniques to “Healthcare Team” has been proposed